My sole mode of personal transportation is my bicycle. I've never driven a car and I'm quite proud of it.
This blog is my place to rant and rave about cycling issues as I see them.

This is not a place for critics of integrated cycling - that conversation is over - segregation has no future - studies show it is not a safe or useful strategy, nor is it a healthy philosophy.

Tuesday, 4 December 2012

Good news: cars are no longer cool!

Is that cool, or lame?

Here's a clue: consider where it looks like it ought to be driving...

then consider where it's really going to be driving...

Yeah.

Last week, on our commute to her school, my
daughter said "Ian,
cars aren't cool". Now while she may simply have been saying what she thought I'd want to hear, I've heard quite a few kids say similar things
recently, and studies show that more and more teenagers are opting out of learning to drive, partially due to the financial climate, but also out
of dissatisfaction.

There was a time
when cars were cool - back in the 1920s, when the open road was... well, open. When cars were rare, when most of them had an open
cockpit, when you started them with a crank and when you needed to wear
goggles and a heavy driving coat. But now? My daughter's right - they aren't
cool. They are lame.

As far as excitement and adventure goes,
driving a car leaves something to be desired: it's air conditioned, you
sit in a comfy chair, you can drive in your shirt even in a blizzard. There's a radio, cupholders, GPS, etc. In terms of explorers, it's hardly 'Scott of the
Antarctic' - heck, it's not even Michael Palin (for those unschooled in British pop culture references, that's he of Monty Python and BBC travel documentary fame). Okay, driving a car today might (at its best) equate to a Rick Steves travel show: pretty, comfortable, safe. But not exactly thrilling. The motorist's motto is something akin to "Hope the seat
warmer is working" or "Glad I've got my coffee". Not exactly stirring stuff.

Even today's car ads have a sort of desperation about them - they're all
about danger, thrills and driving fast somewhere exotic, but when the ad
gets to the interior, it always just looks kinda weak. And the
outside... well, they all look the same - and they're almost always
offered in shades of grey. And you know that when you actually drive it,
it's not going to be an experience of driving like a bat out of hell at Monte Carlo - it's going to be pottering along at 5mph in
bumper-to-bumper traffic while cyclists and bikers pass you by. The fact
is, the modern car experience is slow, frustrating and BORING!

Meanwhile, those of us on bicycles and motorbikes have a different and much
more rugged experience: you're out in the elements, you're on a saddle
(how adventurous is that!), no radio, no cupholder (other than a cage
with a
bottle of near freezing water), no GPS, you must balance and wrestle the
bike through rain, wind, snow. Your motto, like that of the Post Office
is "Victory or Death" (well, not really, but sometimes it feels that
way). If you cycle more than half a mile you get more adventure than a
motorist gets in a week.

So what happened to make
cars go all wimpy and boring? And when did it happen? I don't think there was a key
moment when the car lost its cachet. I think it happened gradually, but it started in the 1960s. At first, it was just environmentalists that dared to say it. Here's a modern example of those early criticisms:

"America is filled with uncool fools who... still think its oh so cool to glamorize and subsidize
man-made machines depleting the world of fossil fuel while spewing
carbon monoxide emissions in all directions and building a deadly
greenhouse designed to perfection for the ultimate destruction of all
humankind."

But then, more and more people started to voice 'that which could not be said' - car ownership is not just 'uncool' - it's stupid and passé:

"Owning a car is thought to be very stupid by Generation Y and they are
moving from car ownership to renting... Today it’s not cool to own a car"

"The car, to them, is a passé form of prestige, of assuming, through the
BMW or Mercedes label, a dignity beyond what the owner knows she’s
worth."

Now auto makers have taken the final step - the ultimate in 'uncool' - trying to be cool:

"...nothing worries automakers more than the mounting evidence that cars are
no longer cool... Surveys suggest that “millennials” regard the car as a tired,
twentieth-century mechanical device that’s out of place in a
twenty-first-century electronic world, where it creates nothing more
than congestion and pollution."

So the auto makers are choosing to go with hi tech gadgetry to make cars appear cool to the new generation of potential motorists. But I think they're going down the wrong path. The 21st Century will, I think, be a time when simplification will be key. People will begin to want their transportation to be cheaper, simpler, more connected to the environment and less hassle. But hey, what do I know? As always, time will tell.

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About Me

I'm from Sheffield, Yorkshire. I lived my first 22 years in England. Between 1984 and 1986, I cycled 10,000 miles throughout Western Europe. I met my American wife in Austria in 1988 and moved to the USA in 1989. I've worked as a shop assistant, a draughtsman, an artist, a bartender, a picture framer, a writer and a genealogical researcher. My daughter and I are probably "The Silver Spring Cyclists" - the only people in town who commute on the bike every day through fair weather or foul: rain, snow, hot or cold. No matter what, we're out on our bikes.

Quotes on Cycling and Society

"When a cow follows the herd, it ends up at a slaughterhouse. When cyclists use bike facilities, they end up at an intersection, often with the same unhappy result as the cow. Use the road - it's safer!" - me again.

"Vehicular cycling techniques have not been tried and found difficult. They have been presumed difficult and not tried." - P.M. Summer, paraphrasing G.K. Chesterton

"If American bicycle advocacy leaders had championed the civil rights movement, the 'Dream' would have been reserved seating in the back of the bus." - Jack R. Taylor

"The task of the 'protected' bicycle facility is to hide collision participants from each other right up to the point of impact." - John Schubert

"Position on the road is by far the most important influence that a cyclist has over his safety. Indeed, the loss of this ability to influence the actions of others is one reason why road-side cycle tracks and shared footways increase danger at junctions. Many cyclists fail to position themselves properly because of their fear of traffic, yet it is this very fear that puts them most at risk. Encouraging unsafe behaviour by directing cyclists to more hazardous positions does nobodyany favours." - John Franklin

"It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so" - Mark Twain